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Artist
Mayo Thompson
12+ albums
folkpsychedelicsinger-songwriterexperimentalamericana
about
Mayo Thompson (born in 1944 in Houston, Texas) is an American musician and visual artist best known as the leader of the avant-garde rock band Red Crayola (Krayola). In 1966, Thompson formed the band Red Crayola with fellow art students Rick Barthelme (brother of novelist Donald Barthelme) and Steve Cunningham amid the burgeoning Houston psychedelic scene which also included bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Familiar Ugly. The original band broke up in 1967 after their second album, Coconut Hotel was rejected by their record company for being too abstract and experimental. In the early 1970s, he lived in New York City, where he worked as a studio assistant for Robert Rauschenberg. After becoming disillusioned with the American art scene, he moved to London having joined the conceptual art group Art & Language, with whom he recorded two albums Corrected Slogans (1976) and Kangaroo (1981). While in London, he became involved with Geoff Travis's distribution business at Rough Trade Records. When the label decided to begin releasing records in 1978, Thompson was asked to produce many of them because Travis did not feel that he had enough experience in the studio. Thompson is credited as producer on early records by The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, The Raincoats, Cabaret Voltaire, Kleenex and many other seminal groups. Working at Rough Trade also led him to reform the Red Crayola with new members from the bands he was working with. The resulting line-up (1979 - 1983) inclu
